Enders In Exile

training and turn himself
into the perfect father. And much of what he had learned in Battle
School and here in Command School would probably serve him well.
Patience, absolute self-control, learning the capabilities of those
under you so you can make up for their deficits through training.
    What was I trained for?
    I am Tribal Man,
thought Ender. The chief. They can trust me utterly to do exactly
what's right for the tribe. But that trust means that I am the one who
decides who lives and dies. Judge, executioner, general, god. That's
what they trained me for. They did it well; I performed as trained. Now
I scan the help wanted ads on the nets and can't find a single job on
offer for which those are the qualifications. No tribes applying for
chieftains, no villages in search of a king, no religions in search of
a warrior-prophet.

    * * * * *
    Officially, Ender was
never supposed to have been informed of the court martial proceedings
against ex-colonel Hyrum Graff. Officially, Ender was too young and too
personally involved and the juvenile psychologists declared, after
several tedious psychological evaluations, that Ender was too fragile
to be exposed to the consequences of his own actions.
    Oh, right,
now
you're worried.
    But that's what the
trial was going to be about, wasn't it? Whether Graff and other
officials—but mostly Graff—acted properly in the
use they made of the children who were put in their care. It was all
being taken very seriously, and from the way adult officers fell silent
or looked away when Ender came into a room, Ender was reasonably sure
that there had been some terrible consequence of something he had done.
    He came to Mazer just
before the trial began and laid out his hypotheses about what was
really going on. "I think Colonel Graff is being put on trial because
they're holding him responsible for things I did. But I doubt that it's
because I blew up the formics' home world and destroyed an entire
sentient species—they approve of that."
    Mazer had nodded wisely
but said nothing—his normal mode of response, left over from
his days as Ender's trainer.
    "So it's something else
I did," said Ender. "I can think of only two things I've done that
they'd put a man on trial for letting me do them. One was a fight I was
in at Battle School. A bigger kid cornered me in a bathroom. He'd been
bragging that he was going to beat me till I wasn't so smart anymore,
and he brought his gang with him. I shamed him into fighting me alone,
and then I put him down in a single move."
    "Really," said Mazer.
    "Bonzo Madrid. Bonito
de Madrid. I think he's dead."
    "Think?"
    "They took me out of
Battle School the next day. They never spoke of him. I assumed that
meant I had really hurt him. I think he's dead. That's the
kind of thing they'd hold a court martial for, isn't it? They have to
account to Bonzo's parents for why their son is dead."
    "Interesting line of
thought," said Mazer. Mazer said that whether his guesses were right or
wrong, so Ender didn't try to interpret it. "Is that all?" asked Mazer.
    "There are governments
and politicians that would like to discredit me. There's a move to keep
me from coming back to Earth. I read the nets, I know what they're
saying, that I'll just be a political football, a target for assassins,
or an asset that my country will use to conquer the world or some such
nonsense. So I think there are those who intend to use Graff's court
martial as a way to publish things about me that would ordinarily be
kept under seal. Things that will make me look like some kind of
monster."
    "You do know that it
sounds suspiciously like paranoia, to think that
Graff's
trial is about
you
."
    "Which makes it all the
more appropriate that I'm in this loony bin," said Ender.
    "You understand that I
can't tell you anything," said Mazer.
    "You don't have to,"
said Ender. "I'm also thinking that there was another boy. Years ago.
When I was just little. He was hardly that much bigger than me. But he
had a gang with him. I talked him out of using them—made it
personal, one-on-one. Just like Bonzo. I wasn't a good fighter then. I
didn't know how. All I could do was go crazy on him.
Hurt
him so bad he'd never dare to come after me again. Hurt him so bad that
his gang would leave me alone, too. I had to
be
crazy in order to scare them with how crazy I was. So I think that
incident is going to be part of the trial, too."
    "Your self-absorption
is really quite sweet—you really are convinced you're